The Jargon Society

Jargon’s first publication, which contained a poem by Jonathan Williams and an engraving by David Ruff, was published in San Francisco in 1951. The press blossomed at Black Mountain College where its peripatetic director moved to study photography with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Jargon’s second publication was a poem by Joel Oppenheimer (“The Dancer”) with a drawing by Robert Rauschenberg. Over the next several years the press would publish Kenneth Patchen, Robert Creeley, The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson, more work by Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, Mina Loy, Robert Duncan, Fielding Dawson, Irving Layton, Guy Davenport, Paul Metcalf—the list goes on and on.

When asked why he published what he had, Williams replied, “For pleasure surely. I am a stubborn, mountaineer Celt with an orphic, priapic, sybaritic streak that must have come to me, along with H. P. Lovecraft, from Outer Cosmic Infinity. Or maybe Flash Gordon brought it from Mongo? Jargon has allowed me to fill my shelves with books I cared for as passionately as I cared for the beloved books of childhood—which I still have: Oz, The Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows, Dr. Doolittle, Ransome, Kipling, et al.”

1. Williams, Jonathan. GARBAGE LITTERS THE IRON FACE OF THE SUN’S CHILDFirst edition:
San Francisco: Jargon, June 1951
Broadside measuring 4″ x 13″ folded twice to make a 4″ x 5″ leaflet, 50 copies, letterpress printed by David Ruff at The Print Workshop. Engraving by David Ruff Published as Jargon 1. (Jaffe A4)
[not in archive]

2. Oppenheimer, Joel. THE DANCERFirst edition:
Highlands: Jargon, 1951
Single sheet folded once to make a 4-page booklet, 150 copies. Illustration by Robert Rauschenberg. Printed at the The Sad Devil Press by Joel Oppenheimer at Black Mountain College. Published as Jargon 2.

b. First edition, signed issue:
Black Mountain: Jonathan Williams, January 1952
Folio sheet folded three times to make a 12-page gate-fold booklet, 8.5″ x 10″ (when folded), 50 copies signed by the writer and illustrator. Drawings by Paul Ellsworth tipped in. Printed at the The Sad Devil Press by Joel Oppenheimer at Black Mountain College. Published as Jargon 3. (Jaffe A7)

13c. Williams, Jonathan. JAMMIN’ THE GREEK SCENE
Note by Charles Olson. Drawings by Fielding Dawson. James Jaffe notes, “Approximately 4 proof copies were produced for a projected edition of 300 copies, but the book, with a cover designed by Fielding Dawson, was never published.” Karlsruhe, 1959. (Jaffe A16)

22. Henry Miller. THE RED NOTEBOOKFirst edition:
Highlands: Jonathan Williams|Jargon Books, 1958
Perfect-bound in printed and illustrated french-fold wrappers, 5.5″ x 8″, 92 pages. Facsimile of one of two notebooks which Miller kept during his Air-Conditioned Nightmare tour across America in the early 1940’s. Author photograph by Wynn Bullock. Published as Jargon 22.